[Venkatesh]

While I have never used a gyro with a FIRST robot autonomous system, I have some experiences with them.

First, a gyroscope will give you the angular velocity of the base platform. This will need to be integrated to obtain the angular position, if that is what you desire. Integration can be carried out by analog circuits (easy), an auxiliary microcontroller (harder), or software (easy).

The main problem with integration is noise. I had once built a mini-navigation unit and strapped it to a model rocket. But before I launched it, I did some testing on my desk. From just noise, I had the thing think that it was spinning at 15 rev/s in just 20 minutes. And that was just on a desk.

I have done some testing with closed loop steering and the old FIRST gyro. There are some people who like closed loop steering (me, for one) and some who do not. I found that it made a vast difference on a test platform, making driving more intuitive. But then again I'm not a driver.

A gyro is a great feature to have on a 'bot. They offer flexibility in terms of driving, autonomous systems, and other areas as well. One idea we once had was to mount a gyro sideways. The gyro would have given us angular tipping velocity (if we were tipping), allowing to compensate and not fall over. Now, we had wanted a gyro for normal navigation as well, so someone came up with a clever device that turned the gyro sideways whenever we were in an area where we might have tipped.

The gyros here, from Analog Devices, have excellent stats compared to our old FIRST ones. Use them well and your robot will achieve wonderous things.